Émile Nelligan

Émile Nelligan
Émile Nelligan as a young man
Born	(1879-12-24)December 24, 1879 Montreal, Quebec
Died	November 18, 1941(1941-11-18) (aged 61) Montreal, Quebec
Occupation	Poet

Émile Nelligan (December 24, 1879 – November 18, 1941) was a francophone poet from Quebec, Canada.

Nelligan was born in Montreal on December 24, 1879 at 602, rue de La Gauchetière (Annuaire Lovell's de 1879). He was the first son of David Nelligan, who arrived in Quebec from Dublin, Ireland at the age of 12. His mother was Émilie Amanda Hudon, from Rimouski, Quebec. He had two sisters, Béatrice and Gertrude.

A follower of Symbolism, he produced poetry profoundly influenced by Octave Crémazie, Louis Fréchette, Charles Baudelaire, Paul Verlaine, Georges Rodenbach, Maurice Rollinat and Edgar Allan Poe. A precocious talent like Arthur Rimbaud, he published his first poems in Montreal at the age of 16.

In 1899, Nelligan suffered a major psychotic breakdown from which he never recovered. He never had a chance to finish his first poetry work which - according to his last notes - he would have entitled Le Récital des Anges.

At the time, rumor and speculation suggested that he went insane because of the vast cultural and language differences between his mother and father. In recent years, however, a number of books and biographical films, including Robert Favreau's 1991 biopic Nelligan, have postulated that Nelligan was gay. Some of these sources suggest that he became mentally ill due to inner conflict between his sexuality and his religious upbringing, while others suggest that he never went insane at all, but was involuntarily committed to the asylum by his family for homophobic reasons. No biographical sources published during Nelligan's lifetime contain any confirmed record of Nelligan having had any sexual or romantic relationships with either men or women, although some posthumous sources have suggested that he may have been the lover of poet Arthur de Bussières. Within the École littéraire de Montréal circle with which both Nelligan and Bussières were associated, it was widely believed that Nelligan was confined to the asylum because his mother discovered him and Bussières in bed together, although this claim was not widely publicized until the late 20th century and remains unconfirmed.